February 11, 2025 • 16 mins
I BET IT'S BEEN BUSY IN DC As a brand new member of Congress Rep. Jeff Crank (CO CD-5) has probably been quite busy. I've got him on at 2:30 to chat about what he's been up to and his first impressions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right now I'm looking at Congressman Jeff Crank and his
hair is just blown straight back from all the activity
in Washington, DC right now. Congressman, first of all, welcome
back to the show. As Congressman. I don't think he've
been on since you were sworn in.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I have been many Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I gotta say, you know, there's an old curse. May
we live in interesting times. Not a person in the
United States of America would not say that the last
three weeks have perhaps been the most interesting three weeks
of governance since the founding. As a brand new member
of Congress, what has this been like for.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
You to coal whirlwind?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I mean it's very exciting, for sure. You know, it
does seem like every day. It'd be crazy if it
was any president, but to have Donald Trump, I mean,
he's so I like to call him the asymmetrical President.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I mean, you think he's gonna come at.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
You, you know, from the left or the right, and
precon he comes down from the sky or up from
the bottom of the earth. He's always doing something. And
you know that's a good thing because I think we
do need that right now when you're fighting gigantic government
that defends itself at you know, no matter to the costs.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I think it's great to have someone like Donald Trump
and the White House fighting for us.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So right now we are seeing a flurry of executive
orders covering everything from birthright citizenship to clawing back money
that's already been spent, to one basically saying bring back
regular straws. I mean, it's been everywhere, but I keep
saying on this program, an executive order is like a
pie cress promise, easily made, easily broken. What is Congress doing?
(01:44):
Are you guys having conversations about how to codify some
of this stuff into actual legislation that will last beyond
the Trump administration?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, we are. First of all, I love the straw one.
That might be my favorite executive order. Yeah, I think
it is everybody's.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, but look, yeah, there's no doubt about that, Mandy.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
There's a lot that the president can do.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
But thankfully, executive power in America is limited. You know.
George Washington, uh, you know, wanted to give up that power,
and it's it's good that our founders made it limited, and.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So I want to respect that too.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
And obviously I think the President's doing things right now
to reverse some of the excesses of the Biden administration.
And that's great, but at the same time, Congress has
a role to make many of these things permanent.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
To to to fix things.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And there were some executive orders as an example, on
drilling and on you know, unleashing.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
The power of energy in America.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
But Congress has to pass enabling legislation to fix some
of the permitting excesses.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We've passed some things already in the House. They're over
in the Senate.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Our biggest problem legislatively is that you require six steve
votes in the US Senate to get anything done, and
Republicans don't have that.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
They have fifty three votes.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, so we're going to have to do a lot
of this through the reconciliation process.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
That's going to be, as the President calls it, one big,
beautiful bill.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
But it's really important that we get to that because
if we don't get that done, all of this stuff
can be reversed the next time a president comes in
like Joe Biden.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And so it's very important that we codify a lot
of this.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
We passed the bill just last week that would forever
prohibit the president from coming in and banning fracking. It
leaves it to the states to decide on fracking. That's great.
We got it through the House. We got to get
it through the Senate. Because again, a president can come
in and throw out.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Donald Trump's executive order. We've got to make sure that
that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Jeff, I want to ask you a little inside baseball
question about the mood of the Democrats in DC, because
I talked about it earlier in the show. In my lifetime,
I don't recall seeing the Democratic Party in this level
of disarray. I don't feel like they have the strong
leadership that they had forever with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumers.
I mean, he's ancient, and you know their leadership is
(04:15):
in disarray behind the scenes. Have you experienced or seen
any willingness to say, hey, look, I know you guys
have your priorities, let's negotiate, let's maybe work on making
some of this stuff a little more palatable. Or are
they in as much disarray from your perspective as well.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I think they're in total disarray, but you do see
at the margins where they do they maybe read the
tea leaves of the election and we saw that on
the Lake and Riley Act. You know, we had about
fifty Democrats in the House who crossed over and voted
for the Lake and Riley Act. Obviously, we couldn't have
gotten Lake and passed through the Senate without having some
(04:57):
Democrat senators come to the table and help the filibusters.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So we did have some movement.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
There, but by and large, I do think they're kind
of rutterless right now. They you know, they played this
game that finally I think caught up with them. It's
the racial politics, it's the politics of division. But you know,
you only do that so long when you have like
labor unions pitted against environmentalists and you're a Democrat party.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Those two can't stand for very long. And you know
that that friction finally.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I think broke in this election, and you saw the
labor union say, well, we're kind of done with you,
and so many of them voted for Trump.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So I think they're trying to.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Figure out who they are, and you know, it remains
to be seen, but they don't have anybody to come
in and step in and pick up the pieces they
thought it would be. You know, Joe Biden's vice president,
but she didn't do well in the election. So who
is the leader of that party? Even ideologically? Who is
(05:57):
the Leader's not Barack Obama anymore. I think you're in
real trouble right now to kind of find their ideological way.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I am afraid that the hardcore left wing of the
party is going to end up being the party head
and the only positive there is. I think that that
would be repugnant to the American people. I think that
is what they rejected in the Democratic Party in this
last election cycle. And honestly, Jeff, not to bring up
(06:24):
a source subject, it's reminiscent of what the Colorado GOP
is doing right now. That's my comment. I will not
ask you to comment on that. I will ask you
to comment on what you would like to see worked
on right this second. What do you think, out of
everything that the president has done, do you think is
the most critical thing that Republicans have to rally behind
(06:44):
and get done right now?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
When I think tax cuts, We've got to extend these
tax cuts because we've got five and a half trillion
dollar tax increase coming this year if Republicans don't extend
the trial tax cuts.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And so to me, that's very important.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Now. Obviously, we promise the American people that we were
going to do border security, and I think the President's
done a great job of that through executive orders. But
there's a lot we can do there. Much of this
has to be done through the reconciliation process because we're
not going to have Democrats helping us, and so you know,
undashing energy, sealing the border, or securing the border of
(07:28):
these tax cuts. So many of these things have to
be done through reconciliation. And it's a really delicate balance, Mandy,
because as I say, you know, we've got fifty three
votes in the Senate, but is an even thinner majority
in the House.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
We've got a two seat.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Majority here out of four hundred and thirty five. We
need two hundred and eighteen votes to pass anything. So
you know, we're going to have to stick together. And
I will just say I think activists are going to
have to understand that. You see, the left for a
while when President Trump came in.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
They were stopping. I don't think they knew what to do,
and you.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Just saw like no resistance for about a month, a
month and maybe a couple of weeks. But now they're resistant.
Right now, they're showing up at the Department of Education
and trying to block you know, go in and things
like that. So we're seeing in pushback. We need the
same kind of energy on our side from people who
(08:23):
believe in a limited role for government to show up
and say, look, I'm here, remember.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Me, I'm the taxpayer.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And if we get that from the American people, and
we get that sense of sticking together as a team
from President Trump, from the House Republicans, and from the
Senate Republicans, we can do great things and we can
save America.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What do you mean for my listeners who don't understand
the reconciliation process versus.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Normal order, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And why is it? Obviously the margins are so small
that you've got to do something extraordinary, but explain what
reconciliation of what that process is.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I never thought I would explain reconciliation to anyone and
not have them fall asleep.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
But I'll try and do it as quickly as I can. Mandy.
I mean, it's basically because of the Senate.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Right in the Senate, we have this cloture rule that
it requires sixty votes, but there's a process called budget reconciliation.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It was created many years ago.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And if something has to do solely, solely pretty much
with spending, you know, with taxing or spending, you can
put it into this process called reconciliation, and you don't.
You can't fill u us for that in the Senate.
So it only requires fifty votes to pass. It's literally
the only thing in the United States Senate that only
(09:40):
requires fifty votes to pass legislation wise, so we have
to roll it in there. But it's things that has
to be more spending than policy.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So we can't just put in a.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Policy into reconciliation that says, for instance.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
We're going to we're going to seal the border.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
That's a policy that's not something that's going to fit
in reconciliingation. And the Senate parliamentarian, who holds a lot
of power in this process would likely rule, hey, you
can't put that in reconciliation.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
But if we say we're going to.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Change a certain status of migrants coming here and that
that's going to have a budgetary impact and it's going
to spend more money or spend less money, that does
become something that can fit into reconciliation.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
So it's a very delicate balance.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
It's going to be a gigantic reconciliation bill that comes together,
and there's going to be things in it that I
don't like. There's gonna be things in it that Gave
Evans isn't going to like. But you know, it's our
one chance to work with this president to pass things
that he's doing right now through executive order that we
can put in the law and won't be changed unless
(10:49):
Congress comes back in and changes them again.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I'm just going to say it.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I hate this, And I understand everything about what you said,
I absolutely understand it. But when you started talking about
reconciliation earlier on, I was like, Ah, for those of
us that are screaming, and I know, I know you're
one of these guys, Jeff like screaming for regular order
on budgeting, screaming for regular order. I mean, it just
feels like this is trying to think of the best
(11:16):
way to put this. It feels like, well, I just
don't like it. I wish that we could have the
sort of Man I hate that.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I hate the process.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I hate all of the rules that are here, but
they are the rules that we have to sort of
use to make this change, and we've got to really,
I mean, the key point of this is we've got
to stick together, Yeah, as a Republican team from the
election through all the way to getting these bills passed.
We've got to stick together as a team or we're
(11:47):
not going to get there.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It isn't you know.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
The election didn't end and we didn't win the super
Bowl on election night. We're going to win when we
fundamentally change America, and we're not there yet.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
We've got to stick together.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
So aside from the reconciliation part of all this and
seeing the stuff that Donald Trump has done and his
priorities and how he's laid them out, I sort of
used the analogy earlier in the show that I feel
like he's grabbed the cage that is Washington, DC and
just shaking it really hard. What can we as people
(12:20):
on the right take advantage of in this created crisis
because people on the left leave everything as a crisis, right,
and we know from rom Emmanuel never let a crisis
go to waste. So what things do you feel like
we can actually gain significantly here?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
I mean, I think obviously on some of the woke
policies and stuff. I really think that's just the America.
Donald Trump kind of finally broke the media, the mainstream
media on a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
And I think, you know, the woke stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
You think back six months ago, a year ago, they
would have fought back so hard on some of this
woke stuff that Trump is going after. But they really
are broken on it. I mean, they realize that the
American people aren't with them on it. So for me,
we've got to really figure out a way to never
go back to where we were shamed into not being
(13:16):
able to discuss issues for fear of being called a
racist or for being called a sexist and things like that.
I mean, I just think there's a lot there that
the American people. Now, it's a gift really that's been
given back to us.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
It's liberty, it's freedom. It's the ability to.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Talk about things that maybe we haven't been able to
talk about for the last four or eight years. And
it's just kind of like, you know, this weight lifted
off of America's chest. And so to me, that's one
of the things that we really need to focus on,
is that free expression, the liberty to talk about these
things again and to have open an honest discussion. So
(13:52):
I'm super excited about that.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Last question before I have to let Congressman Jeff Crank
go for the day. I have seen more people in
the past couple of days or past week on X
being red pilled in real time by the discoveries of
what USAID has been spending our money on. When we
talk about some of the government waste that is out there,
I think that may be the best thing to happen
(14:17):
to the Republican Party in a long time, because you
can't hide anymore. What is your overall feeling on what
DOGE is doing and how much of that should be
codified into law going forward?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Yeah, well, I love what DOGE is doing, and you know,
you can tell how much the American people love it
by the reaction from the left right when the left
goes crazy over Elon Musk and they're, oh, you got
access to to you know the trade three. Well, you know,
we need to have protections so that people's personal data
(14:48):
is protected from the government. I'm actually as concerned about
the government having it as a big tech or anybody
like that, and so those protections need to be in there.
But isn't it interesting the.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Same people who are concerned about that.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
They don't seem to be bothered by the fact that
we were wasting billions of dollars on these things. We're
being pulled out of their pockets and given to foreign
country through these this this web of organizations and things
like that. So to me, I love what Dosa's doing.
They need to double down on it, and we should
shouldn't just be usaid, it should be you know, the
(15:25):
Department of Education, the Department of Defense.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
For goodness sake, there is waste all over this government.
We need to do everything we can to root it out.
And I'm thrilled. You know, obviously, we need to.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Make sure that we're doing it in the right way
and that we're following the law, and I do believe
that they are right. I think, you know, Elon Musk
works for the president in the United States. Not every
person who works for the president has to be approved
by the US Senate and confirmed by them, and he wasn't.
But there's lots of people. The National Security Advisor wasn't
(15:58):
confirmed by the Senate. But still they play a critical
role here. So I just hope they keep going and
keep pushing and keep changing.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
America Congressman Jeff Crank, thank you for your time today.
We'll check in again soon. And wow, hang on, it's
going to be a bumpy ride.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
You got it, Mandy, thanks so much, appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
All right, that's Congressman Jeff Craik from DC.
Right now I'm looking at Congressman Jeff Crank and his
hair is just blown straight back from all the activity
in Washington, DC right now. Congressman, first of all, welcome
back to the show. As Congressman. I don't think he've
been on since you were sworn in.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I have been many Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I gotta say, you know, there's an old curse. May
we live in interesting times. Not a person in the
United States of America would not say that the last
three weeks have perhaps been the most interesting three weeks
of governance since the founding. As a brand new member
of Congress, what has this been like for.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
You to coal whirlwind?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I mean it's very exciting, for sure. You know, it
does seem like every day. It'd be crazy if it
was any president, but to have Donald Trump, I mean,
he's so I like to call him the asymmetrical President.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I mean, you think he's gonna come at.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
You, you know, from the left or the right, and
precon he comes down from the sky or up from
the bottom of the earth. He's always doing something. And
you know that's a good thing because I think we
do need that right now when you're fighting gigantic government
that defends itself at you know, no matter to the costs.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I think it's great to have someone like Donald Trump
and the White House fighting for us.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So right now we are seeing a flurry of executive
orders covering everything from birthright citizenship to clawing back money
that's already been spent, to one basically saying bring back
regular straws. I mean, it's been everywhere, but I keep
saying on this program, an executive order is like a
pie cress promise, easily made, easily broken. What is Congress doing?
(01:44):
Are you guys having conversations about how to codify some
of this stuff into actual legislation that will last beyond
the Trump administration?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, we are. First of all, I love the straw one.
That might be my favorite executive order. Yeah, I think
it is everybody's.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, but look, yeah, there's no doubt about that, Mandy.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
There's a lot that the president can do.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
But thankfully, executive power in America is limited. You know.
George Washington, uh, you know, wanted to give up that power,
and it's it's good that our founders made it limited, and.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So I want to respect that too.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
And obviously I think the President's doing things right now
to reverse some of the excesses of the Biden administration.
And that's great, but at the same time, Congress has
a role to make many of these things permanent.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
To to to fix things.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And there were some executive orders as an example, on
drilling and on you know, unleashing.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
The power of energy in America.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
But Congress has to pass enabling legislation to fix some
of the permitting excesses.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We've passed some things already in the House. They're over
in the Senate.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Our biggest problem legislatively is that you require six steve
votes in the US Senate to get anything done, and
Republicans don't have that.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
They have fifty three votes.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, so we're going to have to do a lot
of this through the reconciliation process.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
That's going to be, as the President calls it, one big,
beautiful bill.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
But it's really important that we get to that because
if we don't get that done, all of this stuff
can be reversed the next time a president comes in
like Joe Biden.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And so it's very important that we codify a lot
of this.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
We passed the bill just last week that would forever
prohibit the president from coming in and banning fracking. It
leaves it to the states to decide on fracking. That's great.
We got it through the House. We got to get
it through the Senate. Because again, a president can come
in and throw out.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Donald Trump's executive order. We've got to make sure that
that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Jeff, I want to ask you a little inside baseball
question about the mood of the Democrats in DC, because
I talked about it earlier in the show. In my lifetime,
I don't recall seeing the Democratic Party in this level
of disarray. I don't feel like they have the strong
leadership that they had forever with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumers.
I mean, he's ancient, and you know their leadership is
(04:15):
in disarray behind the scenes. Have you experienced or seen
any willingness to say, hey, look, I know you guys
have your priorities, let's negotiate, let's maybe work on making
some of this stuff a little more palatable. Or are
they in as much disarray from your perspective as well.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I think they're in total disarray, but you do see
at the margins where they do they maybe read the
tea leaves of the election and we saw that on
the Lake and Riley Act. You know, we had about
fifty Democrats in the House who crossed over and voted
for the Lake and Riley Act. Obviously, we couldn't have
gotten Lake and passed through the Senate without having some
(04:57):
Democrat senators come to the table and help the filibusters.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So we did have some movement.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
There, but by and large, I do think they're kind
of rutterless right now. They you know, they played this
game that finally I think caught up with them. It's
the racial politics, it's the politics of division. But you know,
you only do that so long when you have like
labor unions pitted against environmentalists and you're a Democrat party.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Those two can't stand for very long. And you know
that that friction finally.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I think broke in this election, and you saw the
labor union say, well, we're kind of done with you,
and so many of them voted for Trump.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So I think they're trying to.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Figure out who they are, and you know, it remains
to be seen, but they don't have anybody to come
in and step in and pick up the pieces they
thought it would be. You know, Joe Biden's vice president,
but she didn't do well in the election. So who
is the leader of that party? Even ideologically? Who is
(05:57):
the Leader's not Barack Obama anymore. I think you're in
real trouble right now to kind of find their ideological way.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I am afraid that the hardcore left wing of the
party is going to end up being the party head
and the only positive there is. I think that that
would be repugnant to the American people. I think that
is what they rejected in the Democratic Party in this
last election cycle. And honestly, Jeff, not to bring up
(06:24):
a source subject, it's reminiscent of what the Colorado GOP
is doing right now. That's my comment. I will not
ask you to comment on that. I will ask you
to comment on what you would like to see worked
on right this second. What do you think, out of
everything that the president has done, do you think is
the most critical thing that Republicans have to rally behind
(06:44):
and get done right now?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
When I think tax cuts, We've got to extend these
tax cuts because we've got five and a half trillion
dollar tax increase coming this year if Republicans don't extend
the trial tax cuts.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And so to me, that's very important.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Now. Obviously, we promise the American people that we were
going to do border security, and I think the President's
done a great job of that through executive orders. But
there's a lot we can do there. Much of this
has to be done through the reconciliation process because we're
not going to have Democrats helping us, and so you know,
undashing energy, sealing the border, or securing the border of
(07:28):
these tax cuts. So many of these things have to
be done through reconciliation. And it's a really delicate balance, Mandy,
because as I say, you know, we've got fifty three
votes in the Senate, but is an even thinner majority
in the House.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
We've got a two seat.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Majority here out of four hundred and thirty five. We
need two hundred and eighteen votes to pass anything. So
you know, we're going to have to stick together. And
I will just say I think activists are going to
have to understand that. You see, the left for a
while when President Trump came in.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
They were stopping. I don't think they knew what to do,
and you.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Just saw like no resistance for about a month, a
month and maybe a couple of weeks. But now they're resistant.
Right now, they're showing up at the Department of Education
and trying to block you know, go in and things
like that. So we're seeing in pushback. We need the
same kind of energy on our side from people who
(08:23):
believe in a limited role for government to show up
and say, look, I'm here, remember.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Me, I'm the taxpayer.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And if we get that from the American people, and
we get that sense of sticking together as a team
from President Trump, from the House Republicans, and from the
Senate Republicans, we can do great things and we can
save America.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What do you mean for my listeners who don't understand
the reconciliation process versus.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Normal order, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And why is it? Obviously the margins are so small
that you've got to do something extraordinary, but explain what
reconciliation of what that process is.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I never thought I would explain reconciliation to anyone and
not have them fall asleep.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
But I'll try and do it as quickly as I can. Mandy.
I mean, it's basically because of the Senate.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Right in the Senate, we have this cloture rule that
it requires sixty votes, but there's a process called budget reconciliation.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It was created many years ago.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And if something has to do solely, solely pretty much
with spending, you know, with taxing or spending, you can
put it into this process called reconciliation, and you don't.
You can't fill u us for that in the Senate.
So it only requires fifty votes to pass. It's literally
the only thing in the United States Senate that only
(09:40):
requires fifty votes to pass legislation wise, so we have
to roll it in there. But it's things that has
to be more spending than policy.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So we can't just put in a.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Policy into reconciliation that says, for instance.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
We're going to we're going to seal the border.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
That's a policy that's not something that's going to fit
in reconciliingation. And the Senate parliamentarian, who holds a lot
of power in this process would likely rule, hey, you
can't put that in reconciliation.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
But if we say we're going to.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Change a certain status of migrants coming here and that
that's going to have a budgetary impact and it's going
to spend more money or spend less money, that does
become something that can fit into reconciliation.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
So it's a very delicate balance.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
It's going to be a gigantic reconciliation bill that comes together,
and there's going to be things in it that I
don't like. There's gonna be things in it that Gave
Evans isn't going to like. But you know, it's our
one chance to work with this president to pass things
that he's doing right now through executive order that we
can put in the law and won't be changed unless
(10:49):
Congress comes back in and changes them again.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I'm just going to say it.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I hate this, And I understand everything about what you said,
I absolutely understand it. But when you started talking about
reconciliation earlier on, I was like, Ah, for those of
us that are screaming, and I know, I know you're
one of these guys, Jeff like screaming for regular order
on budgeting, screaming for regular order. I mean, it just
feels like this is trying to think of the best
(11:16):
way to put this. It feels like, well, I just
don't like it. I wish that we could have the
sort of Man I hate that.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I hate the process.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I hate all of the rules that are here, but
they are the rules that we have to sort of
use to make this change, and we've got to really,
I mean, the key point of this is we've got
to stick together, Yeah, as a Republican team from the
election through all the way to getting these bills passed.
We've got to stick together as a team or we're
(11:47):
not going to get there.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It isn't you know.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
The election didn't end and we didn't win the super
Bowl on election night. We're going to win when we
fundamentally change America, and we're not there yet.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
We've got to stick together.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
So aside from the reconciliation part of all this and
seeing the stuff that Donald Trump has done and his
priorities and how he's laid them out, I sort of
used the analogy earlier in the show that I feel
like he's grabbed the cage that is Washington, DC and
just shaking it really hard. What can we as people
(12:20):
on the right take advantage of in this created crisis
because people on the left leave everything as a crisis, right,
and we know from rom Emmanuel never let a crisis
go to waste. So what things do you feel like
we can actually gain significantly here?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
I mean, I think obviously on some of the woke
policies and stuff. I really think that's just the America.
Donald Trump kind of finally broke the media, the mainstream
media on a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
And I think, you know, the woke stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
You think back six months ago, a year ago, they
would have fought back so hard on some of this
woke stuff that Trump is going after. But they really
are broken on it. I mean, they realize that the
American people aren't with them on it. So for me,
we've got to really figure out a way to never
go back to where we were shamed into not being
(13:16):
able to discuss issues for fear of being called a
racist or for being called a sexist and things like that.
I mean, I just think there's a lot there that
the American people. Now, it's a gift really that's been
given back to us.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
It's liberty, it's freedom. It's the ability to.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Talk about things that maybe we haven't been able to
talk about for the last four or eight years. And
it's just kind of like, you know, this weight lifted
off of America's chest. And so to me, that's one
of the things that we really need to focus on,
is that free expression, the liberty to talk about these
things again and to have open an honest discussion. So
(13:52):
I'm super excited about that.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Last question before I have to let Congressman Jeff Crank
go for the day. I have seen more people in
the past couple of days or past week on X
being red pilled in real time by the discoveries of
what USAID has been spending our money on. When we
talk about some of the government waste that is out there,
I think that may be the best thing to happen
(14:17):
to the Republican Party in a long time, because you
can't hide anymore. What is your overall feeling on what
DOGE is doing and how much of that should be
codified into law going forward?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Yeah, well, I love what DOGE is doing, and you know,
you can tell how much the American people love it
by the reaction from the left right when the left
goes crazy over Elon Musk and they're, oh, you got
access to to you know the trade three. Well, you know,
we need to have protections so that people's personal data
(14:48):
is protected from the government. I'm actually as concerned about
the government having it as a big tech or anybody
like that, and so those protections need to be in there.
But isn't it interesting the.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Same people who are concerned about that.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
They don't seem to be bothered by the fact that
we were wasting billions of dollars on these things. We're
being pulled out of their pockets and given to foreign
country through these this this web of organizations and things
like that. So to me, I love what Dosa's doing.
They need to double down on it, and we should
shouldn't just be usaid, it should be you know, the
(15:25):
Department of Education, the Department of Defense.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
For goodness sake, there is waste all over this government.
We need to do everything we can to root it out.
And I'm thrilled. You know, obviously, we need to.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Make sure that we're doing it in the right way
and that we're following the law, and I do believe
that they are right. I think, you know, Elon Musk
works for the president in the United States. Not every
person who works for the president has to be approved
by the US Senate and confirmed by them, and he wasn't.
But there's lots of people. The National Security Advisor wasn't
(15:58):
confirmed by the Senate. But still they play a critical
role here. So I just hope they keep going and
keep pushing and keep changing.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
America Congressman Jeff Crank, thank you for your time today.
We'll check in again soon. And wow, hang on, it's
going to be a bumpy ride.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
You got it, Mandy, thanks so much, appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
All right, that's Congressman Jeff Craik from DC.
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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